Unanimous support: Senate votes on resolution to support apartheid Israel

By Aya Salem

Jun 09, 2017

On June 5 the Senate unanimously passed a resolution putting pressure on Trump to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, one of the promises of his far-right campaign. This resolution demonstrates their support for a larger plan to make Jerusalem the capital of the State of Israel and to encroach further and further into Palestinian lands and sovereignty.

The resolution was voted on the 50th anniversary of the 6-day war of 1967, or what the Palestinian people call the “Naksa.” The tragic date commemorates the ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Palestinians and the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, and the invasion of the Egyptian Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights.

This act of Israeli aggression is instead hailed and celebrated by the Senate and the ruling imperialist elites which comprise it. To take such a vote on a day synonymous with 50 years of Palestinian suffering shows the imperialists’ disdainful attitude towards the oppressed people of Palestine and the surrounding Arab countries while they profit from apartheid and war.

The 90-0 unanimous vote demonstrates that despite the public relations campaign led by the Democrats to convince the people that they are putting up a fight to Trump and the reactionary GOP, all of them fall in line when the matter involves the core interests of U.S. imperialism.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer used this resolution to publicly criticize Trump for his “inaction” and incompetence in achieving the goals of AIPAC and the most reactionary elements of the imperialist elite. This is the Democratic “resistance” to Trump: a resistance based on the defense on the interests of the military-industrial complex and the Wall Street criminals that spreads terror among the oppressed people of the world.

We need to build a different, independent resistance, based on the principles of struggle and solidarity with the people of Palestine who have been living under apartheid for 69 years, under both left-wing and right-wing U.S. and Israeli administrations. We need to understand that while paying lip-service to the masses, the so-called left wing of the capitalist elite is united with the right wing and all other sectors of the ruling class in their shared interests: to exploit and oppress the rest of us.

Congress has shown one more time that it does not represent us, or our grassroots resistance in solidarity with Palestine. That is why, on September 16-17, progressive and revolutionary people from across the country will convene in Washington, D.C., in response to a call from conveners representing a wide range of people’s struggles and organizations to strategize for a long-term resistance rooted in the concerns and power of the people. Down with the millionaires’ Congress, Build the People’s Congress of Resistance!

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